Staff Reporter :
The High Court (HC) on Sunday directed the Election Commission to accept the nomination papers of six BNP candidates— an Upazila Chairman and five Municipal Mayors to enable them to contest in the upcoming general election.
The candidates are Upazila Chairman Sarkar Badal, for Bogura-7 Constituency, Municipal Mayor Amzad Hossain for Nilphamari-4, Fahmid Foisal Chowdhury for Nilphamari-3, Syed Jahangir Alam for Dinajpur-3, Nazmul Haque for Nagaon-5 and Towhidul Islam for Panchagarh-1.
The HC bench of Justice Sheikh Hassan Arif and Justice Razik-Al-Jalil passed the order filed by the six BNP candidates challenging the EC’s decision cancelling their nomination papers.
Earlier, both the EC and Returning Officers (ROs) rejected their nomination papers respectively during appeal hearing and scrutiny as they did not resign from the post of Upazila Chairman and Municipal Mayor. The same Bench of the HC also directed the EC to accept the nomination paper of Gonojagoron Mancha spokesperson Imran H Sarker and to allow him to contest in the 11th parliamentary polls.
The court stayed the Election Commission’s decision of cancelling his nomination paper after hearing a writ petition filed by Imran challenging the EC’s decision.
Imran’s lawyer Barrister Tania Amir said that the Returning Officer rejected Imran’s nomination paper on the ground that there was a mistake in the serial number of signatures of the voters in the nomination paper.
Imran collected the signatures of more than one percent voters of the Kurigram-4 Constituency, she said.
Barrister Ruhul Quddus Kazal appeared in the court on behalf of the BNP candidates. He said, “Five of his clients serving as Municipal Mayors and another one is serving as Upazila Chairman. But the Returning Officers rejected their nomination papers as they did not resign from the post of Upazila Chairman and Municipal Mayor saying the posts are advantageous posts. Then they filed writ petitions with the High Court challenging the decision of the Election Commission.”
“The court issued rule after primary hearing on the petitions. At the same time, the HC stayed the Election Commission’s decision cancelling the nomination papers of those candidates and ordered the EC to accept their nomination papers,” Barrister Kazal said.
